Many of those store brands were also as
tasty as the alternative. Our sensory experts
found that the store brand and name brand
tied in 10 cases, the name brand won in
eight cases, and the store brand won once.

A tie doesn’t indicate that the tastes
were identical. Two products might have
ingredients of similar quality—good, bad,
or in between—but taste very different
because those ingredients differ. A case in
point: our pair of wheat breads. Freihofer’s
has mild grain and malt flavors; Hy-Vee
has a sourdoughlike flavor.

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Nutrition for the pairs is similar, with a
few exceptions we’ve noted in the results
starting on the facing page.

Over the years, we’ve found that a wide
variety of store brands perform about as
well as name brands. That’s what readers
have told us, too. When we surveyed more
than 24,000 of them about supermarket
shopping last year, 72 percent said they’d
bought store brands in the past month,
and 74 percent were highly satisfied with
the quality of store brands at their supermarket.
Asked “In general do you think
that store brands are usually better, the
same as, or worse than national brands,”
3 percent said better, 78 percent said the
same, and 18 percent said worse.

National brands produce and package
a wide variety of store-brand products.
Among the many big names known to
make store brands are Hormel (canned
meats, bouillon, and desserts), Marcal
(paper towels, tissues, and napkins), Mc-
Cain (french fries, appetizers, and frozen
pizza), and Reynolds (foil, plastic wrap
and bags, and disposable plates and cups).

Rarely will you find clues to a store
brand’s heritage, and suppliers can change
at any time. Nor is there any guarantee
that national brands simply slap different
labels on products rolling off the same
assembly line. Store-brand products might
be made to different specifications.

They’re here to stay

Store brands continue to chip away at the
leading brands’ market share. Almost
two-thirds of shoppers surveyed in May
and June 2012 by the management consulting
company Accenture said that their
grocery carts were at least half full of storebrand
products. The biggest categories:
milk, bread, baked goods, and cheese.

In tough economic times, shoppers are
naturally drawn to cheaper brands. But
photo: michael smith
october 2012 ConsumerReports.org 17
private label is not a flash in the pan, says
Matt Arnold, a senior consumer analyst
with Edward Jones, an investment company
based in St. Louis. “If you are able to
create a private-label brand that garners
trust among your shoppers,” he says, “it
almost becomes a national brand within
your four walls.” Indeed, more than half
of respondents to the Accenture survey
said that it would take a permanent price
reduction of a brand-name product—down
to the price of the store brand—to persuade
them to return to buying it.

Consumers have more store-brand
choices, too, as retailers tap into product
categories that lack clear national-brand
leaders. Arnold notes that there are more
“upper tier” private-label products, which
let customers trade up when the economy
improves. Publix, for example, sells dozens
of organic foods under its own brand;
Costco sells Kirkland Signature bourbon,
Greek yogurt, and green tea; Price Chopper
sells its own gelati and an extensive line
of mustards.

But with those fancier store brands and
a current rise in the cost of commodities,
exacerbated by drought, the price gap between
store brands and name brands could
be narrowing. A recent poll of retailers by
Supermarket News found that store-brand
price increases are outpacing those of
national brands. National brands also have
more invested in research and development,
packaging, advertising, and marketing,
so ingredients represent a smaller slice
of their cost. As a result, says Neil Stern,
senior partner with McMillanDoolittle,
retail experts based in Chicago, a rise in
the price of commodities is more likely to
hike prices of private-label products than
those of national brands.

Bottom line.

Based on our tests, store
brands are often at least as good as national
brands and usually cost much less. They’re
worth a try. Your taste buds might be
happy; your wallet certainly will be.

Verdict: Giant Eagle. It’s a simple, mild broth with a slight taste of roasted chicken.
Swanson’s broth tastes highly processed, has hints of dehydrated spice and off-tastes,
and varied a bit from one sample to another.

Toss-ups:

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Skippy 20 cents per serving, Wegmans 15 cents per serving.

Verdict: Tie. Both are fine choices. Skippy is a bit sweeter and slightly more bitter
than Wegmans, which has more of a roasted impression.

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Ocean Spray 44 cents per serving, Meijer 37 cents per serving.

Verdict: Tie. They are of about equal (though imperfect) quality. Ocean
Spray has more fruit flavor and tastes slightly less “cooked,” but it’s a bit bitter
and has an odd perfumelike note. Meijer is very tart—more sour than sweet.
Both contain juices from other fruits, such as grape and apple.

Verdict: Tie. They are of about the same quality, but they taste different. Hidden Valley has black-pepper bits and flavors of Parmesan and Dijon; Market Pantry has more prominent buttermilk and vinegar flavors.

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Friendship 68 cents per serving, H-E-B 31 cents per serving.

Verdict: Tie. Friendship’s small curds are soft, and the product is bland overall. H-E-B’s curds are chewy and a bit salty, with a tangy, slightly sour dairy flavor.

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Freihofer’s 26 cents per two slices,
Hy-Vee 14 cents per two slices.

Verdict: Tie. Their textures are similar—
soft—but their tastes are not. Freihofer’s has
mild grain and malt flavors and a caramel color,
plus a burnt top that adds bitterness. Hy-Vee
looks almost like white bread. It has a yeasty,
sourdoughlike flavor and slight off-tastes.

Verdict: Kellogg’s.Kellogg’s, with a pancake-syrup flavor, isn’t great, but Essential loses because of slightly chalky oats, with just a few clusters; an oxidized taste; and a lingering bitter aftertaste. It also
has more sodium.

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.

Bush’s
56 cents per serving,
Food Lion 37 cents per serving.

Verdict: Bush’s. Bush’s boasts
brown-sugar and molasses flavors,
with a slight smoky note. Food Lion
has a harsh, ashy artificial smoke flavor,
is bitter, and has a metallic off-note.
Those drawbacks overwhelm the more
subtle flavors of onion and molasses.

Verdict: Ben & Jerry’s. It has flavorful
dark-chocolate chips and lots of big dough
chunks that are a bit gritty. Kroger’s ice
cream is mediocre, and the dough is
in small, gritty pellets, with artificial
butterscotch and raw-flour flavors.

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Quaker
16 cents per serving,
Publix 11 cents per serving.

Verdict: Quaker. It has clean, nutty grain
flavors with a toasted taste. Publix, on the
other hand, is soft and a bit mushy, with
lots of broken oat pieces.

Verdict: Bird's Eye. Its flavorful,
fresh-tasting vegetables trounce
the starchy, shriveled, low-flavor
veggies from Stop & Shop, which
also have more sodium.

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Stouffer’s
$1.58 per serving, Eating Right (Safeway)
$1.50 per serving.

Verdict: Stouffer’s. The name-brand lasagna wouldn’t be mistaken for homemade,
but it’s decent. The Eating Right product is dominated by dehydrated-oregano
and greasy/fatty flavors. The meat bits are chewy; the noodles, pasty. But Stouffer’s
has more sodium than Eating Right.

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Soy Dream
84 cents per serving,
Price Chopper 40 cents per serving.

Verdict: Soy Dream. Soy Dream is
sweet and off-white, and has vanilla and
slight malt flavors. Price Chopper is thin,
beige, and lightly sweetened, with hints
of adhesive-bandage and Play-doh-like
tastes and a licorice aftertaste.

Verdict: Tropicana. It has distinct orange
flavor and is moderately sweet. In Nice,
cooked flavors with marmalade and vitamin
notes detract from the score, as does a
lingering bitterness. Nice is “pasteurized
from concentrate”; Tropicana claims its
product is “never from concentrate.”

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Dear Carolyn DEAR CAROLYN: Should I be worried that my wife and I have had no sex for literally years? I am guessing it is at least three years. Not even heavy make-out sessions. It just seems that my wife has no interest. I am afraid to broach the subject for fear of a negative answer. We don’t sleep in the same bed anymore either. I am a big snorer and chose to sleep in the guest room. It’s fine because she is a light sleeper and I am happier that she is getting her sleep. I do use a CPAP but it does come off sometimes. The no-sex thing just happened over time. We have both gained some weight but we are not obese — we could both lose 20 or 30 pounds. Is this normal or should we seek help? —

Sara Gruen wrote Water for Elephants, and now she’s written a plea to her fans to help her cause. New York Times bestselling author Sara Gruen has a big problem on her hands — well, 166 problems, to be exact. Right after the Black Friday rush, Gruen learned that this season’s must-have gift is Hatchimals: interactive, battery-operated “animals” that live inside “eggs” that eventually hatch to reveal a surprise creature once you’ve nurtured and cared for your egg during its gestation.

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